TECHNOLOGICAL LEARNING AND INNOVATION: SOME PERSPECTIVES OF ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY
MIAO Chang-hong1, WEI Ye-hua2
1. Center for Yellow River Civilization and Sustainable Development and College of Environment and Planning, Henan University, Kaifeng 475001, China;
2. Department of Geography, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah 84112-9155, USA
Abstract：Since the early 1990s, technological learning and innovation has increasingly become one of the core research aspects of economic geography. Interacted intensively with "heterodox economics" such as in stitutional and evolutionary economics and economic sociology, the exciting development on this research field has not only promoted the coming and thriving of "new economic geography" and made economic geography approach increasingly the core of social sciences, but also contributed the unique geographical perspective for "heterodox economists" to investigate the mechanisms of technological learning and innovation. In this paper, we try to review thoroughly the rising and developing processes for economic geographers to open the "black box" of technological innovation by studying the development of regional economy and high-tech industry with characters of flexibility and specialization, and discuss extensively three main interrelated but contesting perspectives to explain geographical mechanisms of technological learning and innovation mechanisms. The first but also the most popular one is on geographical proximity and territorial innovation model, the second challenges the first and focuses on relational proximity and practice community, and the third overlaps with the first and second but concentrates on institutional proximity, embeddedness and path dependence and lock-in. Each has made strong claims about the bases of the new competition and the dynamics of technological learning and knowledge transfer, but each has some limits on theoretical formulation and empirical research. In order to develop an integrative theoretical framework to understand the process of technological learning and knowledge transfer in a global economy, we need integrate the above three perspectives and mechanisms into a conception such as "creative field" and do more complemented empirical researches.
